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Donald Trump is loud

After the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, a couple of weeks ago everywhere was buzzing with Donald Trump’s acceptance speech. So I just had to go and look!

It is more than 75 minutes long, so I’ll keep my comments brief.

I suppose it is in the nature of such jamborees that the speaker is expected to bellow all the time. My pondering whether Americans have heard of microphones would be less than courteous, and naughty; but in case anyone wonders let me make it clear that with only a rudimentary grasp of microphone technique Trump would be completely audible if he spoke to this hall as if he were speaking across a dining table. If he speaks like this across his dining table I do hope I’m never invited.

Actually, in all seriousness, if he spoke as if across a dining table he would be more audible, because he often commits an error that is quite widespread. I call it disproportionate syllable stress. The speaker, when raising his voice, hammers the bejabers out of stress syllables at the expense of subordinate syllables which disappear completely. Subordinate syllables are almost always at the ends of words, and there are several parts of this speech where word-ends go AWOL. (Obama does it worse, by the way.)

Other than that technical observation I’ll merely say that Trump is a very good speaker.

I should not be concerned with what says – I am not an American voter – but while we’re here…

If you wrote a memo to your line manager, identifying in detail what was going wrong with your company, he might appreciate your frankness. If in the process you nevertheless failed to make adequate suggestions as to what should be done to correct the problems he might be less than satisfied. This is the principal problem with this speech. Trump highlights very effectively what is wrong with the administration of the USA, but is rather light on suggested remedies.